A Canadian food mag? Fat chance

Supportive stories must be taken where they are found; one supporting the position of the Canadian magazine industry concerning the predatory practices of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission has appeared in the National Post. The paper is not usually noted for a positive attitude towards Canadian magazines.

Gina Mallet, however, makes again a point that Magazines Canada has made about Food and Drink, the LCBO controlled title that hoovers up a good deal of the marketing budget of beverage alcohol companies in this country (not to mention going after lifestyle advertising in other sectors). She also highlights the knock-down drag-em-out fight between the Nova Scotia commission and Saltscapes magazine, which accuses the government body of theft of an idea and virtually all its alcohol advertising.

She makes the point that tiny New Zealand has become a foodie paradise, exporting all sorts of products and celebrating its excellence, and publishes excellent food and wine magazines (such as Cuisine) that circulate worldwide. Ontarions can barely find their own wines in stores, let alone those from British Columbia. And there is still no national, consumer food magazine of any stature. (Australia's excellent Delicious is coming into North America in a digest format, as a partnership with Reader's Digest.)

Three out of four items of beverage alcohol sold in Ontario is an import and the LCBO seems to like it that way. And it scoops up so much revenue for its own magazine there is little left to support a private sector competitor.

Paul Jones, the former publisher of Maclean's, and now a magazine consultant, is quoted as saying: "If you look at the volume of beverage/alcohol advertising in Canadian magazines 20 years ago versus today, the decline is shocking.

"One of the biggest considerations is that the LCBO, the monopoly vendor in Ontario of most wine and spirits, has made a decision to chase the marketing budgets of the products it sells.

"If you were a distributor of alcoholic beverages in Ontario, would you allocate your marketing budgets anywhere else, knowing as you do the power that the LCBO has to make or break your business?"

(Mallet, by the way, says that Magazines Canada submitted a protest to the Ontario government, but hasn't heard back. That's not quite true. The sad story is that it has heard back and the answer is that the government intends to do nothing about the situation.)